Israel's
military said it launched airstrikes against Hezbollah sites in Lebanon on
Monday, which Lebanese authorities said had killed 492 people and sent tens of
thousands fleeing for safety in the country's deadliest day in decades.
After some
of the heaviest cross-border exchanges of fire since hostilities flared in
October, Israel warned people in Lebanon to evacuate areas where it said the
armed movement was storing weapons.
Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a short video statement addressed to the
Lebanese people.
"Israel's
war is not with you, it's with Hezbollah. For too long Hezbollah has been using
you as human shields," he said.
Families from
south Lebanon loaded cars, vans and trucks with belongings and
people, sometimes multiple generations in one vehicle. As bombs rained down,
children crammed onto parents' laps and suitcases were tied to car roofs.
Highways
north were gridlocked. "I grabbed all the important papers and we got out.
Strikes all around us. It was terrifying," said Abed Afou, who was with
his family, including three sons aged 6 to 13 and several other relatives. They
sat in traffic as it crawled north.
They did not
know where they would stay, he said, but just wanted to reach Beirut.
Nasser
Yassin, the Lebanese minister coordinating the crisis response, told Reuters 89
temporary shelters in schools and other facilities had been activated, with
capacity for more than 26,000 people as civilians fled "Israeli
atrocities".
After almost
a year of war against Hamas in Gaza on its southern
border, Israel is shifting its
focus to the northern frontier, where Iran-backed Hezbollah has
been firing rockets into Israel in support of Hamas, also backed by Iran.
Israel's
military said it struck Hezbollah in Lebanon's south, east and north, including
"launchers, command posts and terrorist infrastructure." The Israeli
Air Force struck about 1,600 Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon and the
Bekaa Valley, it said.
Lebanon's
health ministry said at least 492 people had been killed, including 35
children, and 1,645 wounded. One Lebanese official said it was Lebanon's
highest daily death toll from violence since the 1975-1990 civil war.
The fighting
has raised fears that the U.S., Israel's close ally, and Iran will be sucked
into a wider war.
Saudi Arabia
expressed deep concern on Monday and urged all parties to exercise restraint,
state news agency SPA reported.
A senior
U.S. State Department official said the United States did not support a
cross-border escalation between Israel and Hezbollah and that Washington was
going to discuss "concrete ideas" with allies and partners to prevent
the war from broadening.
Israeli
officials have said the recent uptick in airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in
Lebanon is designed to force the Iran-aligned group to agree to a diplomatic
solution.
The U.S.
official, briefing reporters in New York on condition of anonymity, pushed back
on the Israeli position, saying the Biden administration was focused on
"reducing tensions ... and breaking the cycle of
strike-counterstrike."
Also in New
York, Iranian President Masoud
Pezeshkian said Israel wanted to drag the Middle East into a
full-blown war by provoking Iran to join the Israel-Hezbollah conflict.
"It is
Israel that seeks to create this all-out conflict," he told journalists
after his arrival to attend the U.N. General Assembly, saying the consequences
of such instability would be irreversible.
CONFLICT
'PEAK'
Israeli
Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said Monday marked a "significant peak"
in the nearly year-long conflict.
"On
this day we have taken out of order tens of thousands of rockets and precise
munition. What Hezbollah has built over a period of 20 years since the second
Lebanon War is in fact being destroyed by the IDF," he said in a
statement, referring to the Israel Defense Forces.
On Monday
evening Israel launched a strike on Beirut's southern suburbs aimed at senior
Hezbollah leader Ali Karaki, the head of the southern front. Hezbollah later
said he was safe and had moved to a secure location.
But Hamas'
armed wing said its field commander in southern Lebanon, Mahmoud al Nader, was
killed in an Israeli air strike.
Rear Admiral
Daniel Hagari said in a statement that Israeli strikes had hit long-range
cruise missiles, heavyweight rockets, short-range rockets and explosive drones.
In response,
Hezbollah said it launched dozens of missiles at a military base in northern
Israel.
Sirens
warning of Hezbollah rocket fire sounded across northern Israel, including in
the port city of Haifa, and in the northern part of the occupied West Bank, the
military said.
About 60,000
people have been evacuated from northern Israel because of the cross-border
fighting. Gallant said the campaign would continue until the residents had
returned to their homes. Hezbollah for its part has vowed to fight until there
is a ceasefire in Gaza.
Hagari said
Hezbollah put weaponry "inside Lebanese villages and civilian homes, and
intended to fire them toward civilians in Israel while endangering the Lebanese
civilian population."
Hezbollah
has not commented on the assertion that it has hidden weapons in houses, which
Reuters could not independently verify, but it has said it does not place
military infrastructure near civilians.
The strikes
have redoubled the pressure on the group, which last week suffered heavy losses
when thousands of pagers and
walkie-talkies used by its members exploded. The operation was
widely attributed to Israel, which has not confirmed nor denied responsibility.
The foreign
ministers of the Group of Seven major democracies warned that the Middle East
risked being dragged into a broader conflict that no country would gain from,
according to a statement released after meeting on the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly.